this raises the legitimate question of why garchomp was unbanned as part of this test

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I am guessing it was because Garchomp was the poster-boy for Sand Veil.
Remove the Sand Veil and all of a sudden he's not Uber.

Whether that's down to Sand Veil alone is the debatable point.
I come down on the side of Sand Veil + pokemon with good enough typing etc to use it = unbalanced but Sand Veil + mediocre pokemon = mediocre pokemon with Sand Veil.

I am guessing it was because Garchomp was the poster-boy for Sand Veil.
Remove the Sand Veil and all of a sudden he's not Uber.

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i believed this was the case as well, in which case the banning of sand veil would have a cause/effect relationship with the unbanning of garchomp (ie sand veil is banned, THEREFORE garchomp no longer needs to be banned).

however there are also people who hold the reverse opinion, which is that we want garchomp back because it can potentially improve the game (i neither support nor oppose this opinion), but to bring it back we first need to ban sand veil otherwise it will "probably remain uber" (i neither support nor oppose this opinion), ie "garchomp is unbanned, THEREFORE sand veil needs to be banned". what i want to know is which of these positions is correct, or if there is a third one that i am missing. it's possible that the "real" answer is somewhere in between those, ie "sand veil is banned, THEREFORE garchomp no longer needs to be banned, and in addition garchomp needs to be unbanned to improve metagame balance". it's even possible that there is no answer and the council is just trolling me, but my opinion of smogon is a bit too high for that.

i believed this was the case as well, in which case the banning of sand veil would have a cause/effect relationship with the unbanning of garchomp (ie sand veil is banned, THEREFORE garchomp no longer needs to be banned).

however there are also people who hold the reverse opinion, which is that we want garchomp back because it can potentially improve the game (not my opinion), but to bring it back we first need to ban sand veil otherwise it will "probably remain uber" (not my opinion), ie "garchomp is unbanned, THEREFORE sand veil needs to be banned". what i want to know is which of these positions is correct, or if there is a third one that i am missing

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The more I see this thread the more I want a complex ban of Garchomp/Sand Veil.... and I hate complex bans like these.

Whether that's down to Sand Veil alone is the debatable point.
I come down on the side of Sand Veil + pokemon with good enough typing etc to use it = unbalanced but Sand Veil + mediocre pokemon = mediocre pokemon with Sand Veil.

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This, this, and more of this. Sand Veil isn't inherently broken on it's own. It takes a special pokemon like Garchomp who's stats and Typing is perfect for it to abuse Sand Veil. Imagine if Something like Dragonite got Magic Guard. Suddenly Dragonite can switch in on stealth rock and sandstorm, It can properly abuse Life Orb, and with it's stat's spread, typing, and HUGE movepool, I could imagine it being damn broken. Is that Magic Guard's fault? I don't think so. Reuniclus isn't broken with it, Alakazam isn't broken with it, hell Clefable isn't broken with it. Dragonite just has the things it needs to abuse Magic Guard. That's what Sand Veil is to Garchomp. Something it can properly abuse to the point of being broken.

@alkinesthetase I might be straying into dangerous, dangerous territory here, but I have seen very, very little from people I would call "experienced smogon players" in this thread. Granted, there was some imput from Kevin Garret, Aldaron, and DetroitLolcat (just off the top of my head, I'm sorry if I'm really forgetting anyone). On the contrary, I've been seeing an unbelievable number of people who I would call "inexperienced" who's posts look exactly the same. "Having play tested garchomp, I can say it isn't broken. Bringing it back would be a good thing. #freegarchomp". Et cetera, et cetera. I'm sorry, but I can't really fine the opinion of someone who created an account just to say they think Garchomp isn't broken that credible. Garchomp is most definitely the poster boy for sand veil, and when you remove sand veil from the game it suddenly gives you an excuse to bring garchomp back.

Speaking from experience, I have no experience. From what I can infer, I think garchomp is broken. I don't have that much experience, though. I've never used a garchomp, but you know, I haven't really faced one either. I just find it very surprising that one thread the came out of basically nowhere in my opinion caused such waves through the community. Honestly, do you love this one pokemon that much to "get you back into the game" just because it's released?

If we think sand veil is the problem, we should have put it into a suspect test. Then, we should have tested garchomp. The fact that they are happening at the same time makes it seem like getting garchomp back was the entire purpose, when, the purpose should have been to question only sand veil.

Pocket EDIT: Play the suspect ladder and see for yourself; Garchomp is not really a "big deal"

EDIT: is sand veil by itself honestly that broken? Let's look at moody: yes, even a bidoof can sweep a team with moody. But can it sweep a team with sand veil? No, it can't. It does take a garchomp to make "sand veil" the problem, not the pokemon that abuses it. Yeah, someone will probably take this out of context, and this isn't on the same level as moody is, but it should still make us take a look at the situation before we make rash decisions.

Also, alkinesthetase, I have also never seen an SD Gliscor anywhere. I have no real idea where these people getting swept by it are coming from. Never seen it.
I'm very sorry if I've offended or disrespected the members of the smogon council or anyone as part of the community for coming up with this idea.

Garchomp is going to be a monster in HO teams with Dual Screens support. With a moveset of SD / Outrage or D-Claw / EQ / Fire Fang and Yache Berry, nothing can stop him. I don't think that there is a single poke in OU that can either outspeed and OHKO, or take a hit and ohko a +2 Garchomp under screens. Can't wait to try him out!

EDIT: I just found the only poke able to OHKO and outspeed Garchomp under Screens, which is no other than Specs or LO Latios which ohkoes with DM. Everything else fails though.

I'm gonna tell it straight right off the bat that I'd like to advocate for a complex ban on this. I believe that banning Sand Stream + Sand Veil is superior to a flat ban on Sand Veil. Note that my reasoning for this isn't because of "precedent" in the Drizzle + Swift Swim ban, I just think that it helps to fulfill our characteristics of a desirable metagame, with some amount of luck, but not to the point of uncompetitiveness. There are two main reasons why I think that a complex ban would be beneficial in this circumstance, and I'll address some counter-arguments as well. I'm sure the council is aware that a flat ban on Sand Veil, while not having any noticable effects on the OU metagame, would jeopardize some lower tier Pokemon from their viability or effectiveness, the most notable example being Cacturne, who faces some movepool restrictions when it's forced to give up Sand Veil and use Water Absorb instead. Also, in my mind when you're using sand, you should be taking a risk. You take a risk that your opponent will be using Sand Veil, while if you can't abuse its effects yourself, allowing your opponent to abuse them will be exactly the same as opting to use Hydro Pump instead of Surf. This is my main argument for a complex ban.

The main reason why people want Sand Veil banned is that you have no control over whether your otherwise 100% accurate move will hit or not. With a complex ban in place, you will have control over whether your 100% accurate move hits an opponent through Sand Veil. The solution is simple in this case: don't use sand. Right now, you can't stop your opponent from taking advantage of Sand Veil by setting up their own weather, making it a chance that you have no control over. By choosing to use Hydro Pump over Surf, you accept the fact that it will miss 20% of the time. Don't like that? Use Surf instead. Like I said before, with a complex ban in place, this exact scenario is created when using a sand team. Hate missing against a weatherless team with Garchomp with a 100% accurate move when you set up the sand yourself? Stop using sand.

There is really only one reason that I can think of not to employ a complex ban over a flat ban, and that's simplicity of banlist. While I really don't have an answer to that, I just think that a complex ban will serve us better in the long run. The other thing that I can see people's responses being is something like "If I select a 100% accurate move I expect it to hit no matter what." And to that, I say that you did make a decision on whether your move could miss or not, it just has nothing to do with the listed accuracy of the move.

I just wanted to point out why people complain about Sand Veil or Brightpowder and such as opposed to shit like Jirachi's Iron Head or Flame Body or Scald hax. Abilities or items that increase your evasion are passive effects. There are no conditions needed to be met to meet the possibility of them occurring (aside from Sand being up but that's passive too). If a Garchomp or a Gliscor or whatever the fuck has Sand Veil is in the Sand, it can do whatever it wants and reap the benefits of the possible miss. They can set up Substitute or Swords Dance or use whatever moves they want, and come out with the possibility of being untouched. This is different than other more active hax related effects that I have seen brought up in this thread. Jirachi has to actively use Iron Head or Body Slam or Thunder or whatever to abuse its effect, which means Jirachi's activity that turn is determined. The user HAS to use Scald, and the Pokemon with Flame Body HAS to be hit by a physical attack. There has to be a condition met to use these effects that constrains the users turn. That's the key distinction between evasion effects and other hax related effects: with evasion, an individual has that security blanket up and is able to do whatever else it wants and can still abuse that possible miss chance, while with other effects, specific conditions have to be met (move being used or user being hit) for the possibility of the hax to occur. That's why it is right to complain about the former as opposed to the latter; I really don't want to see other arguments suggesting "we just ban everything hax related" for these reasons.

Regarding the issue at hand, I'm all for more complex bans such as Sandstream + Sand Veil because they just make more sense to me. Plus fuck you if I'm losing my Sand Veil Cacturne (yeah I'm biased screw you)

I don't often post, but I feel this issue needs another input. For the last 4 years i've played competitive pokemon I've had my up's and downs and none of teams has ever been "perfect". However, I have made it high enough on the ladder in most gen's to understand what it's like to battle 'good' people, in a very tough competitive match. One thing that all gen's have had in common, at high level play, every move counts. The simple risk of a 1 in 5 miss on a powerful sweeper is too much. While, there are many other forms of hax in the meta, such as rachi, they are all limited by the pp of the moves and the base stats of the pokemon. Rachi is only 100 base speed, which means it's outrun by most of the faster meta, and it's flinch moves only have 24 pp, which isn't enough to go through an entire properly constructed team. Sand viel can be a decisive ability deciding games by pure luck. Without it, Garchomp isn't that dangerous, checked by most steels, and faster dragons. I do not support an outright ban on sand veil as i feel it doesn't really fit the meta we have tried to foster. Not all battles are decided by the skill during the game, most are won outside, during team building. Sand veil shouldn't be allowed with sandstorm, but instead should be banned in conjunction with sand stream similar to swift swim+drizzle. To be fair, this would also mean a banning of snow cloak+hail, as this would be an extension of the evasion clause. I think this ban reflects the ideals and previous decisions that smogon has done in the past.

@alkinesthetase I might be straying into dangerous, dangerous territory here, but I have seen very, very little from people I would call "experienced smogon players" in this thread. Granted, there was some imput from Kevin Garret, Aldaron, and DetroitLolcat (just off the top of my head, I'm sorry if I'm really forgetting anyone). On the contrary, I've been seeing an unbelievable number of people who I would call "inexperienced" who's posts look exactly the same. "Having play tested garchomp, I can say it isn't broken. Bringing it back would be a good thing. #freegarchomp". Et cetera, et cetera. I'm sorry, but I can't really fine the opinion of someone who created an account just to say they think Garchomp isn't broken that credible.

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Well, I feel that some people may find that rather offensive. Just because people aren't super moderators doesn't mean that they are inexperienced.

Speaking from experience, I have no experience. From what I can infer, I think garchomp is broken. I don't have that much experience, though. I've never used a garchomp, but you know, I haven't really faced one either.

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Wait, what? I don't mean to sound rude here, but if you yourself have no actual experience with Garchomp, why are you berating everyone who has? If a good number of people who tested Garchomp are saying it isn't broken, there's a good chance that they are telling the truth. If you really want to find out whether or not Garchomp is broken, I would suggest you go test it for yourself.

I've always tried to stay away from garchomp, mainly because I've had a very passive opinion that I though it was broken. I expected it to get banned in BW1, so I didn't use it and get attached...like it seems half of the community did.

There are a lot of people testing Garchomp in the suspect ladder, but I have seen a couple of examples of people in this thread saying that they have been out of the loop for a while and just got back into the game through this suspect ladder. Does that give them a good picture of what's happening right now? The point I was trying to make is that when you go back a couple pages, literally every post said the same thing: people said they had tested it and that it checked all the weather teams and that it was manageable with Ice Shard.

So, from what I understand many people were saying, Garchomp should be allowed back because it checks things such as weather, genesect, and genies with the scarf sets. Clearly, that's not the reason anything should be brought down. I'm not trying to call out anybody that is new to the game and using garchomp, but the argument that they're making towards bringing him down is completely flawed. That's how my mind saw it, anyway. Maybe that's not how people felt, but that's how I saw it. Again, I've always tried to stay away from garchomp in general. I suppose what I wanted to say is that I'm not berating people for testing it, I'm berating them for having flawed reasons for using it again.

Don't worry about sounding rude, I try to stay professional in debates about a video game pretty much made for children.

@complete, that actually sounds pretty nice. You should be allowed to use sand veil in the case that your opponent is packing sand, and THEY are responsible for bringing it, putting themselves at a disadvantage.

Didn't want a huge wall of text, but anyway. I've always found Landorus-T to be a great check to physical Dragons, and it definitely keeps Garchomp in check. Instead of +2 boosted hits, you only have to handle +1 boosted attacks. If it's Banded, you're just dealing with non-LO Garchomp without a Scarf. If it's Scarfed, well, lol. Idgaf about 130 Attack. -1 Attack is -1 Attack. Seriously, Lando-T is amazing and Garchomp being around just adds to the list of physical attackers it can hold in check.

I've found that Sun teams are generally benefiting most from Garchomp atm. It gives them a strong physical Dragon that isn't weak to SR and can still utilize Fire moves (Fire Fang and Fire Blast) Dragon+Ground is an amazing STAB combination and if you add a pseudo-STAB Fire move to it, very few things can hope to safely switch-in. Still, 102 Speed isn't what it was last Gen. Sure, you still get in front of Salamence, Volcarona, and friends, but you still fall short of Latios, Terrakion, Keldeo, and the rarer Infernape. Garchomp is great, but there are plenty of things to keep it in check now. And now, you don't have to worry about randomly missing with a move that's supposed to have 100% accuracy.

I found this to be a complete exaggeration. There are many checks to Garchomp now, and if you are still afraid, just use Weavile/Mamoswine. Seriously, who does this that you have spoke are overestimating Garchomp. In fact, before this test ladder, I've battled with some pseudo-OU teams that used Garchomp (and that's the only reason that their teams were labeled as Ubers) and I never had problems taking Garchomp down.

That's what I am saying. Garchomp benefits sun teams that now have a member that doesn't compound their weakness to Stealth Rock and Water attacks. Sun teams tend to have a lot of checks to Mamoswine and Weavile. Thick Fat is negated by the sun wich means that Mamoswine's neutrality to Fire turns in a weakness. I can see Garchomp becoming a staple on many sun teams - I've always wanted to use a Dragon-type on my sun team but all Dragons either had a weakness to Stealth Rock or had secondary STABs that overlaped with something on my team. Garchomp has neither of these problems.

The only problem is that Garchomp is forced to use Fire Blast off a base 80 Special Attack, or use Fire Fang, while despite being physical, is innacurate and weak. Not that you are forced to use a Fire-type attack on him, but I can see no reason why you would not if you can now 2HKO Specially Defensive Skarmory (and maybe physically defensive ones with sufficient Swords Dance boosts) and OHKO Ferrothorn.

I tried to use Garchomp on my sand team, and then I realized that it's much better to use him on sun. Despite Garchomp not being weak to sandstorm damage and not compounding weakness, Garchomp doesn't do anything that Landorus can't already do.

I don't understand this logic. What you're basically saying here is "Well this is why it was banned in early DP, so it must be why it was banned in BW!". 102 base Speed is good, but in this Speed-obsessed metagame, certainly not amazing. In addition, Ice Shard is literally everywhere in the metagame even without Garchomp.

Also, I'd just like to ask: How is Garchomp any more metagame dominant than, say, Terrakion? I've found that in all of my battles on the suspect ladder, my Terrakion does significantly more work than my Garchomp. SD Garchomp sweeps are much harder to pull off without Sand Veil, in addition to such a large number of things in this metagame being faster than it. Very rarely did I ever get the chance to pull off a Garchomp sweep, and when I did, I was forced into late-game sweeping because of the ubiquity of Ice Shard and threats faster than it. In addition, I fail to see how ScarfChomp is any better than Scarf Landorus. Without Sand Veil, Garchomp is just really easy to kill. As such, I believe its ban in early DP should not be used in an argument in BW2. BW2 is not DP and should not be treated as such.

Went to the suspect ladder to test Garchomp, and I can really say that I don't think it is broken. I mainly used Scarf Garchomp in my matches (got #1 on ladder pretty easily), and it really didn't perform that much differently from other scarfers like Landorus. Albeit scarf isn't the only set, and they have different STAB's etc, but Garchomp really wasn't game breaking in any of my matches. I sort of view Rough Skin Garchomp as the new Landorus-I (as it was to the BW1 metagame), as it has a good speed that lets it check many boosters.

Frankly without Sand Veil, Garchomp is hard pressed to effectively set up SubSD (in my experience vs it). I do believe Sand Veil was the main reason for its previous ban, and without it Garchomp is pretty mediocre (as a booster) and is pretty much as broken as most of the other dragons in our metagame. Also to all the people saying Sand Veil isn't broken, I would really just like to quote something BKC said,

Of course this will rarely happen, but the premise is the same in that even though you may have Garchomp checks/counter (well in this case Gliscor), Sand Veil may allow them to dodge your guaranteed KO move, letting them then sweep your team. I really don't see how an ability that turns an absolute win into an absolute loss, and is entirely based on luck, shouldn't be banned.

Anyways onto the actual Garchomp set discussion. I really see Choice Scarf as being his main set, as it lets him always outspeed some key players in the metagame (Genesect/Thundurus-t) and he can still hit really hard with his base 130 Attack. Sub Salac SD Garchomp is also a really cool set, letting you get a speed boost after a potential attack boost, essentially preparing you to wreck.

Plenty of reasoning beyond "it checks things", and there are posts like these all over the thread. So these claims you've been making about peoples' reasoning being dependent on its checking things are demonstrably false.

I suppose I was being a bit too narrow-minded and saw only what I wanted to see. While I can't ignore a lot of reasonable claims for garchomp to be back, there has also been an abnormal amount of unreasonable claims, if what I can remember from other suspect discussions. I obviously was just focusing on that too much to try and prove my point.

I suppose I'm just going to have to go with whatever the community decides on this one, really. No hard feelings to anyone I've been debating with, hopefully.

So, from what I understand many people were saying, Garchomp should be allowed back because it checks things such as weather, genesect, and genies with the scarf sets. Clearly, that's not the reason anything should be brought down.

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I can understand your reasoning behind that. In an earlier post I believe you mentioned the idea of "bringing down Extreeme killer Arceus to check things," as you believed it to be the same idea as bringing Garchomp down.

However, something that should be considered is that, unlike Arceus or most Uber pokemon, Garchomp was originally OU. From there, it was deemed to powerful and sent to Ubers. The same thing happened when BW1 came out. Now, this is BW2, which is a surprisingly different metagame from BW1. It's introduced a lot of new (and faster) threats that can potentially keep Garchomp in check. I believe it is for this reason that we are testing it in OU once again; not to check anything, but because it may just be that in this new metagame, Garchomp may no longer be broken.

Honestly a lot of those "inexperienced" people I was stupidly discussing before were pretty much using this as their only argument. Indeed, BW2 has given us a lot more, pretty much for the better. Who knows, maybe I'll actually enjoy using this thing to...*sigh*...check the onslaught of sun teams steamrolling over everything nowadays. I'll just have to deal with it. Latios, Latias, Mew, Wobuffet, and Mence are OU now, so when I think about it, Garchomp deserves a chance to be considered too.

Honestly I just have to apologize for referencing a bunch of crappy arguments that nobody was going to listen to anyway to try and prove my own arguments. I always have to try to be right.

So, from what I understand many people were saying, Garchomp should be allowed back because it checks things such as weather, genesect, and genies with the scarf sets. Clearly, that's not the reason anything should be brought down.

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this post really bugs me. not cuz of the check things part, but because of the idea that we actually need a reason to bring something back down outside of its not broken/its healthy for the meta. i dont like the idea that we would ever keep something banned without having great reasons to unban it. on the contrary, i think we should be trying to get something unbanned unless we still have great reasons to ban it. for something like excadrill or ho-oh, i see great reasons to ban it. for something like chomp, especially without sand veil, i dont see any great reason at all.

Yeah I really don't want to deal with any more theorymoning in this thread when there's a functioning ladder with Garchomp. If you want to comment on whether or not Garchomp is broken or not, go play with and/or against the damn thing first. Please don't pull this bullshit.

Surprisingly, I've found sand to be pretty anti-meta atm. Maybe it's because of the influx of sun teams... I've found it easy to 6-0 sun teams left and right. I find garchomp relatively easy to deal with, and I'll still stand by that. I have about 3 checks. Celebi, donphan, and ditto. All of them deal well against it. Donphan can deal with scarf versions easily and some band versions too. Celebi may not be able to take as many hits but it does a heavy chunk with leafstorm. Then there's ditto who keeps garchomp from setting up on either of the two. Swords dance is okish, but it's way too easily revenged and scarf lacks power. The best sets imo are LO and choiceband. Life orb makes an excellent early game wall breaker while choice band can maul through weakened teams late game. I think garchomp makes an excellent addition to the tier, being able to check annoying tactics such as volt-turn. While simultaneously not being way too ground breaking. I have yet to see or test the bulky set, so I'm wondering how it works and what kind of team it needs for it to be successful.

Again, mods and council people, I'd like an explanation as to why this is acceptable. Forgive me if I sound confrontational, but nothing gets me more furious than blatant hypocrisy, and without an explanation that's all I see going on here.

I'll stop typing before I get myself banned.

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something that DJD said in that Characteristics thread Jimera took the luck explanation from:

I am not trying to "lay down the law" for the metagame, by shoving a bunch of definitions down peoples' throats. I simply want to come up with some common ground for intelligent debate. Whether we establish ground rules or not, people are going to be discussing this stuff -- so we might as well have some common goals and make the discussions somewhat productive. I formed these characteristics based on my general interpretation of the things that people are already arguing and discussing. I tried to categorize all the meaningful policy arguments that commonly occur here, couched the definitions in broad wording to allow plenty of room for interpretation, and then filled in a few gaps that seemed necessary to present a comprehensive whole.

Some of these definitions may be universally unquestioned, and may only require minor wording changes. Some other characteristics could be deeply objectionable to many people, and may need to be stricken completely. I may have missed some characteristics that need to be added. But, I think we need these characteristics to be defined. And I think they should be defined at a "constitutional" level, where they provide a general framework for future discussions and debate, without enumerating every nuance of the metagame down to the details. The details are a constant work in progress. The details are the metagame itself. These are simply the basic underpinnings and characteristics we would like to have in our ideal metagame. We may never succeed in creating a metagame that exhibits some or all of these qualities -- but I like to think it could be fun to try.

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basically what that says is that those characteristics aren't a hard and fast platform which we base our banning policy off of. they are intended to set some general definitions so we can have positive metagame discussion without it collapsing into squabbling over semantics. the characteristics are also variable and possibly subject to change.

A little more clarification on what I'm saying: banning Sand Veil as a whole would be banning an aspect of uncompetitive luck, but it would also be banning a bit of competitive luck as well (you took the risk of using sand, and you may have to pay the price; this isn't uncompetitive, it's the very opposite: what we've come to expect in Pokemon). However, if we go with a complex ban, you are banning only what is uncompetitive, and nothing more. It's better for precedent too, since in my mind banning Sand Veil itself takes you closer to the edge of the slippery slope, where you can argue for the banning of moves with less than 100% accuracy, critical hits, Scald burns, etc. To me, a complex ban can be employed when the positives completely outweigh the negative of having a complex ban, and this is one of those times.

Here again to say that I am not in favor of the complex-ban of "Sand Veil+Sand Stream", but AM in favor of the complex ban of "Sand Veil+THE THINGS THAT ARE BROKEN WITH IT". Why this is such a hard thing to wrap our minds around? KurashiDragon put it well with his Magic Guard example, so everybody think about that.

Also, with a Sand Veil+Sand Stream ban, you're buffing rain even more than BW2 already did. People are talking about banning rain in the suspect thread at this moment, so do you all really want to take away something that lets sand attempt to face rain? Or are all your hearts set on banning rain next?

(Turns out I went from citing this a little bit to really a lot. If you haven't read it yet, do.)

It's amazing how knotty an issue this has become. However, I'd suggest that there are two major points in contention here: the degree to which luck is appropriate in the metagame and whether Smogon should write its rules on the basis of simplicity and ideological purity or in a more ad hoc pursuit of the best possible metagame.

The first point isn't really about Garchomp at all. Hurry up and test it, see if it's still broken. I'm not going to try and theorymon it, but Salamence sets a precedent for a big, bad metagame-breaking threat becoming rather tame when the metagame shifts. If Garchomp is still broken? I don't know. If it isn't, then it seems like common sense to drop it down to OU, adding another little layer of complexity and interest to the tier--to namecheck the Characteristics of a Desirable Metagame, we do want Variety, don't we?

It's about Sand Veil, and it's about luck. Again, citing dougjustdoug's write-up, the degree to which luck should play a part in the metagame is not clear. Should we abolish critical hits and ramp up all accuracy to 100%? God, no. The Flamethrower/Fire Blast debate is just about the single most interesting thing to happen during my time playing Pokemon. When I started, back in third gen, the conventional wisdom of the time was unequivocally against 120/80 moves with nice, safe ~90/100 alternatives. I mean, you do more damage, yes, but at what cost? You have placed yourself into the control of the Dice Gods, and those bastards can be fucking brutal.

But then people started doing more maths, and something wonderful happened. (This always happens when someone starts doing some maths.) If Pokemon X uses Flamethrower on Pokemon Y, it deals 75-85% damage, and then Pokemon Y scores a clean KO on its next move. But if X is running Fire Blast, however, it deals at least 95% damage--an OHKO with SR! Fire Blast is unreliable, it has only an 80% chance to get the kill. But Flamethrower has a 0% chance to KO. Fire Blast is clearly the superior option in some contexts, on some Pokemon--Flamethrower is in others.

Luck deepens and adds complexity, it adds to the quality of Skill. A Skilful player will be able to determine when Flamethrower is appropriate and when Fire Blast is appropriate. Awesome. But what about the other side of luck, the Serene Grace Jirachi/random goddamn fucking crit side of luck? Sometimes, luck renders skill moot. A string of Iron Head flinches is, to me at least, inappropriate (if only because it never happens for me). A player's skill has no bearing on whether or not Iron Head flinches, and the outcome of the game appears to be determined wholly by chance. This luck is bad, right? I use Scald. Everyone does, it rocks. It's a fun thing though--one could argue that Thunderbolt's 10% paralysis chance is not why they chose to use Thunderbolt, but the only reason people use Scald over Surf is the 30% burn rate. I consider this fine.

TL;DR: In discussing whether or not Sand Veil should be banned (or the extent to which the Evasion Clause should be extended), we much acknowledge that different players have different expectations about how much luck should affect the metagame. Instead of discussing whether or not it is "broken", perhaps we should discuss whether or not Sand Veil is, as an ability considered unto itself, a source of an unreasonable amount of luck.We should endeavour to reach some clear consensus as a community about how much luck is appropriate.

Is an ability's distribution an inherent part? (To wit, does the fact that fuck-all actually uses Sand Veil factor into the discussion?) I guess, on some level, distribution counts. If more things got Shadow Tag, we'd certainly be discussing that. It's this sort of question that feeds into the other major point of contention: the pragmaticists versus the purists. (Heads up, I don't know which camp is in the right, if either. If it seems like I'm favouring one camp over the other ... sorry.)

The purists want a clean ruleset for the metagame. This isn't just fussiness, there are clear benefits to a simple set of house rules--clarity, for example. If people are able to learn and understand all of Smogon's rules easily and without fuss, everything would be goddamn wonderful. We, as a community, don't want to be seen as the pretentious pedants busily over-complicating an already pretty complex game. In a perfect world, the rules for OU would be simple: a list of banned Pokemon, a list of banned items, a list of banned moves, a list of banned abilities, Sleep Clause.

But this isn't a perfect world (fuck yeah, Candide!). The Swift Swim/Drizzle ban can perhaps be seen as the first great victory of the pragmaticists. It's a complex ban (shock! horror!), which has, in my opinion, been "better" for the metagame in the long run. Rain is no longer the be-all and end-all of OU (although still potent), and weather wars have added another layer of variety to the metagame which would be a shame to lose. But there are pitfalls to this mindset also. Consider the Cacturne. We don't see much of him in OU, but in the lower tiers Cacturne gets some green spiky action and adds some wonderful variety to the meta. Cacturne has the ability Sand Veil, which is nice, but not central to how he plays. However, forcing Cacturne to use his DW ability, Water Absorb, causes him to lose access to some of his more interesting moves. A pure pragmaticist mindset would insist that we should have different rules for OU and below (Sand Veil banned in OU, allowed for Cacturne in UU), or that a special exception be made for Cacturne in the Evasion Clause.

TL;DR: You're not stupid, and you've almost certainly figured it out. The absolutes of ideological purity and ironically pure pragmaticism are not healthy for the metagame, or for Smogon's reputation. We need a metagame that is fun, diverse and competitive, with reasonably simple rules. We need to strike a balance between the two absolutes of the purist and the pragmaticist.

What is the ... point of all this? Well, perhaps that dichotomies are fucking stupid, and should instead aim somewhere in the middle. Purity or fun? Total lucklessness or a clusterfuck of luck? We need to know we are talking about, we need to reach some consensuses about what we actually want from the metagame, and then let these consensuses inform how we make decisions. Cool?